Digitalisation as a factor of resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic

The overall objective of the programme is to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Eastern and Southern regions of Africa through digitalisation activities in the Education, Technical and Vocational Training (TVT) and Health Services sectors.

The RESICODI programme, which has been implemented by Enabel in Burundi for a year, can count on the experience of the ACFPT project in digitisation to achieve its results. The idea of this programme is to use digital technology as a tool for resilience in the face of pandemic periods such as Covid19.

This programme in Burundi supports 9 “Centres d'Enseignement des Métiers (CEM)” which receive support in three areas: firstly, the provision of digital libraries with educational content in various disciplines; secondly, the equipment, physical layout and energy security of multimedia rooms; and thirdly, the strengthening of the IT skills of the teaching teams.

In order to respond to the skill-building component, training for 19 ICT trainers from the 9 centres supported began in April 2022. In order to be as relevant as possible to local realities, this training is provided by Burundi Formation, a national service provider.

Thanks to this reinforcement, these trainers will be able to increase the quality of their teaching and thus enable Burundi to have a youth that is aware of the importance of digital technology and equipped with solid skills. In addition, these trainers will also be able to become computer resource persons within their centre and more globally in the community. This is a first step towards the digitalisation of the various services and making them more resilient in the face of crisis situations.

With modern digital equipment, adapted infrastructures and quality training, these centres will serve as a model in digital technology within their region and even on a national scale.

Donavine Kwizera, Communication Expert (Enabel Burundi)